Good morning, world! I hope you woke up healthy and happy this morning, with nothing to hinder your thoughts and the sun shining on your life.

When I got out of bed this morning, my amazing wife put a glass of iced coffee and breakfast in front of me right as I sat down on the couch, and she kissed my tiredness away. Nine seconds later, we saw this video while reading the news. I was so inspired by that I had to share. The video below is of 14 year old comedian Jack Carroll, who made an amazing presence on Britain’s Got Talent – and walking away with four enthusiastic YES votes and a thumbs up from Simon Cowell.

I am never, ever disappointed by Make. Not in seven years of doing this blog have I ever come across a story on Make that wasn’t the coolest thing I had ever seen, and I read somewhere in the neighborhood of eleventy million blog posts a week. Well, it might be more in the tennedy million range, but you get the point. Make is wicked.

Check this out — Maker and awesome duderino Collin Cunningham is sporting a cool LED tie in this video, which also consequently shows you how to make the tie! It’s a breakaway tie that is modeled on the prison guard-style of tie, velcro in the rear of the neck; there’s also a microphone in the knot that feeds back into the LED controller, giving you a walking VU Meter! As you can imagine if you know me, mine would be peaked all day long. This system is built on Adafruit‘s wearable electronics platform called FLORA — from the website:

FLORA is Adafruit’s wearable electronics platform. We designed it from the ground up to provide the best experience for Adafruit’s community of makers, hackers, crafters, artists, designers and engineers. It’s built around the Atmega32u4 chip, which has built-in USB support. No pesky special cables or extra parts for programming, just plug it in and get started making the wearables project of your dreams! Works on Windows and Mac.

The FLORA is extremely beginner-friendly– it is difficult to destroy the FLORA by connecting a battery backwards due to polarized connector and protection diodes. The onboard regulator means that even connecting a 9V battery will not result in damage or tears.

The Ampli-Tie!

This FLORA device is pretty cool! If you’re a tinkerer like me who loves to solder stuff and blow up all kinds of delicate circuitry because you are an occasional dumbass, this thing is the way to go, with its onboard voltage regulator! Check this out:

This entire project is pretty much given to the world free at Adafruit’s website (the Adafruit Learning System, which is pretty awesome!); you can make your own Ampli-Tie to wear around the conferences! Go check out Make, one of the coolest places for nerds on Planet Earth!

Seriously. The design firm is called Something. Two designer pals, Daniel Debiasi and Federico Sandri, created an industrial design firm that seems to be doing pretty well. Today’s Daily Lamp is certainly something I would own, fo sho!

Naica is the name of a northern Mexican city, pretty famous for its crystal mine. Have you ever seen images of the mammoth crystal formations in Mexico?

Reminding a bit on a cavern itself, these lamps are inspired by carbide lanterns from the past, originally used by miners. The light is diffused by reflection, creating a gently faded glow on the inner surface of the ceramics.
The cable covered with fabric doubles as a handle to easily move the lamp from one spot to another. The lamp is available either in white or with a red coloured cavity.

This is a really stunning lamp. I would love to see this sitting in my bedroom right now!

For contrast, the lamp makers mention its inspiration draws from carbide lamps from the mining days. Have you seen one of these?

I had to know more about this crazy cave at Naica. This thing has crystals of Selenite that are 4 feet wide in some places. That boggles my mind! I found this crazy video of a team going into the cave — for some reason they’re all packed up with ice. I’ve seen several videos now that have people trapsing through the Naica caves, but none with the kind of protection this crew has.

Take a pico projector, add an iPhone feeding it some content, and film the whole thing with some fun music, and you have a pico projector cop chase. You also have a handful of awesome:

GAH! Sweet. The film is from The Theory and Nexus Productions — from the Vimeo site:

The world’s smallest all action police chase…

Directed By The Theory

The tiniest police chase ever seen, made using the world’s smallest ‘pocket video projectors’. Featuring an escaped convict, a determined cop and a fully armed police helicopter, Speed of Light takes ‘projection mapping’ to a whole new (and low) level.

Speed of Light was all projected and filmed FOR REAL – there’s no CGI trickery.

– The car and helicopter are toys bought from a model shop filmed against greenscreen.
– As well as using the world’s smallest projectors from MicroVision, we also partially filmed using the world’s smallest HD camera.

I wonder how long it’ll be before every iPhone and iPad has the ability to project video in HD? I can’t believe it’s going to be THAT long… look how well Flip HD did once smart phones upped their megapixels! These pico projectors are pretty cool, though. If I were going to buy my own projector, it’d have to be one of those monster Christie projectors. Rawrrrrrrrrr…..

Thanks, LikeCool! PS, that projector up top there is the Vivitek Qumi Q2 3d-ready pico projector — about $500 bucks USD.

Juan Pablo Zaramella’s stop motion short Luminaris has won my heart! The film effortlessly dives you in to a world controlled by light, and one man’s big ideas about that.

It is absolutely wondrous.

Below is the trailer. There are also two behind the scenes videos online showing the tests Zaramella performed with light and stop motion, but please watch the film first! If you won’t heed my spoiler warning, though… click here.

STORY TIME! Try to guess where in the world Lumen Sandiego is, and learn about some RE-DONK-U-LOUS-LY cool lighting art at the same time!

Some years ago, I travelled to an “Art Island,” which hosts work by some very spectacular artists, including Claude Monet, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Tadao Ando, Yves Klein, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and most importantly for this post, James Turrell between its public art, museums, and hotel.

One museum is located underground, lit via sky lights and windows. I had just taken my first ever lighting design class, and was seeing lighting design everywhere in so much depth it was a little ridiculous (see definition for: obsession). There I saw my first piece by James Turrell, his “Afrum, Pale Blue” (1968). Seeing a piece of art made entirely of light and location impacted me, its simplicity as its strength.

The next piece of his I saw was “Open Field” (2000). There was a guide, who motioned for us to remove our shoes, and I filed in to a line with some other patrons. I felt ritual saturating the room, as we were asked to mount the stairs. We reached the top step, and stood facing the wall, and the flat expanse of uniform blue light directly in front of us. It was the flawless, the smoothest, most perfect panel of light I had seen.

Then my mind was blown.

The guide directed asked us to enter. I suppose he must have motioned, because I don’t believe I spoke the language quite good enough to have understood. I was baffled. I knew I was staring at what I could only assume is the most flawlessly backlit piece of frosted plexi ever. There was nothing to enter. If I stepped forward, I would hit the wall and have humiliated myself, and the polite people in line with me. However, we trusted the guide, and stepped in to the wall.

Wow.

It was not a wall, but a vast blue void.

Inside, to the camera, it looks like this:

But to human eyes, it looks like this:

I was in an entirely different plane, I was in flatland, I was up against a wall, I was in infinity…

Long story short, James Turrell’s work is CA-RAY-ZAY! We wandered the blue space, exploring its limits, exploring ours, before we finally walked down the steps and put our shoes back on.

***

This was my introduction to the Light and Space movement. This art movement originated in the 1960s in Southern California. It used light as an integral medium, and focused on creating “perceptual phenomena.”

Why does this matter to us as lighting designers, technicians, or light lovers? Well, let’s just ask trusty ol’ Wikipedia what the Light and Space movement involved, shall we?

Whether by directing the flow of natural light, embedding artificial light within objects or architecture, or by playing with light through the use of transparent, translucent or reflective materials, Light and Space artists made the spectator’s experience of light and other sensory phenomena under specific conditions the focus of their work.

BOOM.In that one sentence, light was referenced 5 times. That’s more than your average show review. So clearly, these artists have found a way to make one hell of an impact via light. I will speak more about Light and Space movement in the next “Where in the World is Lumen Sandiego?” and give more examples of how they expertly manipulate light, but let’s keep this first installation short… QUIZ TIME!

Where do you think I was? I kept it very easy as this is the first installation of “Where in the World is Lumen Sandiego,” so enjoy the feat of victory while you still can! Post a comment, or I’ll reveal next time. Have a tip for a spectacular location of light “Lumen Sandiego” should visit? Submit your tip to daphne (at) jimonlight.com or via the contact form.